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the true god is geometry

Obviously,Gĕ Hóng 葛洪 is a very important figure in study of taoism and his Bàopŭ zi 抱樸子 (Book of the Master Who Embraces Simplicity (Traditional Chinese here and Simplified Chinese in the Encyclopedia article) is an important source of information too.

Needless to say, there will not be much simplicity in his picture of Taoism, so let’s make an agreement: every citation of this author which will be helpful to understand details of the ‘minor arts’ (xiaoshu—healing methods, longevity techniques, divination), nourishing life (breathing, gymnastics – daoyin, sexual techniques – fangzhong shu), and meditation will be treated carefully. All other ideas and thoughts will be omitted, because the main goal of these private notes is to figure out the shortest way through the many centuries to the core of taoism as it was for ‘cultivating inner nature of any person’ and not a religious and organized movement in the history of one of the biggest civilization in the modern world.

There are a couple of pictures of Ge Hong from the ‘sacred internet’, it looks like he was a very different person sometimes. Frankly, the same visual effects can come in sight when we deal with scientific/historic ideas and this is another brick in my strong intention to find anything close to the time of the origin. These two pictures will not be included, definitely 🙂